`Smoke' Has No Fire

Tony Stewart Has Parked His Notorious Temper.

"All we could control ... was our emotions," Stewart said of his disastrous race at Charlotte last week, when he was breezing toward a win but became the biggest victim of an epidemic of blown tires, and crashed.

The once-volatile driver controlled himself and inspired his team, and they stormed back from adversity Friday to win the pole for Sunday's Subway 500.

Even with the latest trouble, Stewart is tied in points for the lead in the Chase for the Championship with Charlotte race winner Jimmie Johnson, but has a slight edge on a tie-breaker, having won five races this season to Johnson's four.

"I think we've been really good this year when we've had adversity like that, being able to take the negative and find the positive in it before we even left the track," Stewart said. "I mean, we were in a better mind set as a team leaving Charlotte Saturday night than we were when we ran 18th at Dover [in September, in the second round of the Chase] and had our problems there. We had our heads down."

Rebounds like this week's are "the stuff that helps you win championships," Stewart said. "There's no guarantee we're going to do it, but we can't do it if we have a bad frame of mind going into this week.

"So all the guys on our team are pumped up."

It showed with Stewart's lap speed of 98.083 mph in his Chevrolet on flat, half-mile Martinsville Speedway. Ricky Rudd was second-fastest in a Ford at 97.992, followed by Rusty Wallace in a Dodge at 97.931.

Time was when Stewart, whose nickname is "Smoke," could drag down his team's spirits with a post-race outburst or complaint.

"When I'm not dragging the team down, I think it helps all of us," Stewart said. "When the one person who is dragging everybody back gets on the same page and does his part, it makes a huge difference."

Of leaving Charlotte calm and upbeat, he said, "I think it's just maturing, and knowing that once they dropped the checkered flag the points were what they were, the night was what it was, the race was what it was, and there was nothing we could do to change it. All we could control at that point was our emotions about it. Keeping everybody excited was the most productive way to leave the racetrack for us."

Isn't this a new kind of role for NASCAR's most notorious bad boy?

"Oh, yeah," he said with a grin. "Wouldn't you all agree that if we didn't know any better we'd think the world was coming to an end and the sky was falling?

"Yeah, it's definitely a different role for me, but it's not something that I said, `Hey, this is something I've got to do.' It's just what feels right.

"A lot of things have changed this year and we've talked about it all year" including his moving back to the serenity of his small hometown, Columbus, Ind.

"I'm at a point where I'm comfortable enough with myself now where I can look at the big picture and lead by the example that [team owner] Joe Gibbs has given us, and what Zippy [crew chief Greg Zipadelli] has done for the past six years, and be able to do my part," Stewart said. "To see some of the things that this team has gone through this year in years past we probably would have been grenading internally. It would have affected performance.

"Now, this year, all it's done is motivate us more. And today is an example of that."